Escape From Dinosauria (Dinopocalypse Book 1) (18 page)

“Can’t...breathe…”

“Oh, come on. Stop being a pussy,” Jamie said.

“Everything around us is dangerous,” Kenshin said. “We must move.”

Izzy punched the dirt as he tried to stand up. “I am a man of science, not athleticism.”

“You are a man of pathetic lungs. Let’s go.”

Jamie turned around and started walking. Like an infant throwing a tantrum, Izzy would eventually get scared of being left alone and catch up. She had no idea how fast those millipedes were, or if they were actually chasing them, and she did not particularly care to find out.

2

When Doctor Izzy’s face stopped bleeding, he tried to argue that they should go
around
the resort rather than through it. Jamie did not want to stay a second longer on the island than she needed to, and Kenshin agreed that speed was a factor; there were going to be savage monsters no matter how they decided to get to the airport.

Jamie knew they were close when they could see the massive hotel where she had nearly died. She thought she spotted a gaping hole where an entire floor had been, and she wondered if it was something that she just wanted to see. Maybe she wanted validation that this nightmare was real.

There was something she had brought with her to this island. She had forgotten all about it until now. It was sitting in the suite she had never had a chance to share with Jordan. Now that she remembered it, there was no way she was leaving this shithole without it.

Huge, winged creatures soared in the sky and circled around the hotel. She could hear their screeches and her warmth flooded her belly along with another round of grumbling.

Kenshin led them to the massive brick wall that surrounded the resort. A lot of good it did these people.

“Kresevich’s people might be hanging around the front gate,” Kenshin said.

“And they wouldn’t patrol the perimeter?” Jamie asked.

“It seems this is the best way.”

He pointed to a gaping hole in the wall. Bricks lay scattered like the ashes of a thousand corpses.

“This was supposed to protect people?” Jamie asked.

“They weren’t supposed to be aggressive,” Doctor Israel said. “The wall was just supposed to provide a sense of security, I think.”

“Even that huge bug?” Jamie asked.

“Fuck that bug right in its bug asshole,” Izzy said.

“We’re wasting time.” Kenshin stepped through the hole, one hand on his sword.

The streets could be littered with dead tourists—or maybe the majority of them were lucky enough to escape. At the very least, she had to be ready to fight. They’d gotten lucky on the hike through the woods and hadn’t encountered too much trouble. But here, in the city, she doubted life would be as uneventful. If humans had been here, then that gave the dinosaurs a good reason to stick around. Unless they’d emptied the buffet and abandoned the resort in search for meal number two.

They climbed through the collapsed wall and hopped over the barricade. It was clear immediately that the city was destroyed. She’d expected as much, but the sight still managed to leave her breathless. Tour buses were scattered on their sides along the street, huge chunks of steel missing, like something large had clawed their way inside and eaten up the buses’ contents. Restaurants and various Dinosauria hotspots were either dark from abandonment or crumbled. How long had it taken the island to devolve into such a mess? How many people made it off? One glance at the abandoned, half-destroyed buildings and she couldn’t help but wonder how many tourists were currently hiding inside them. The reality that nobody could be out there, watching her, was terrifying. Surely there was at least one pervert left alive. Even when an island’s entire human population had been murdered or had escaped to safety, even when you had spent three weeks in a coma only to wake up with weird powers, even when dinosaurs were brought back from extinction, there would always be perverts. She could depend on perverts. But the windows of the buildings around them were black and empty. If someone was watching them as they moved through the city, they were doing a good job of remaining unnoticed.

“I’m not feeling too well,” Izzy said. “My face is throbbing. I hope I didn’t give those
Arthropleuras
any kind of venomous toxins it could have scratched into me.”

“Well, did you?” Jamie asked.

He shrugged. “When you’re a brilliant scientist like myself, it’s pretty easy to lose track of these sorts of things.”

Jamie snorted. “Your face looks like shit, man.”

“Thanks.”

“It would be wise to keep our talking to a minimum,” Kenshin said. “The dragons think of this sanctuary as an easy target for prey. Let’s attempt to avoid this at all costs.”

They walked through the fallen city, mesmerized by the now nihilistic structures inside downtown Dinosauria. Jamie expected the streets to be littered with corpses, but she didn’t see a soul. However, a good amount of the cement they walked down was stained with a dark red—enough evidence of some kind of massacre, in case Jamie failed to escape the island and researchers rediscovered the city years from now. Although it wasn’t like the island was lost. This was the 21st century; nothing was lost. Dinosauria was just being ignored. When she made it back to California, she would sue the shit out of the government for failing to rescue her and countless others whose lives were now either ended or ruined thanks to their incompetence. How do you just leave a CFI champion on an island overrun by dinosaurs? Wasn’t her agent worried? Weren’t her fans devastated? Surely something like #BringJamieHome was trending on Twitter. Well, maybe for the first day or so of the disaster. After that, something else controversial probably happened, like maybe Donald Trump made another racist comment about Mexicans, or perhaps a cat performed an amusing flip of some sort. When she finally did make it back, news of Jamie Rock being a dinosaur mutant would blast through the world for exactly two days, then nobody would give a shit until Michael Bay adapted her life story into a very loud and explosive blockbuster.

The city continued to represent grisly crime scenes as they moved deeper into its jaws. Blood on the ground, but no bodies in sight. The dinosaurs had eaten the corpses, obviously. Why waste good meat? But where were the dinosaurs now? Maybe they’d picked this place clean, moved on to find grub elsewhere. Maybe they were waiting just around the corner, intoxicated with the scent of new food on the move.

She would not hesitate to punch a dinosaur in its stupid fucking face.

They stopped at the closest restroom so Izzy could inspect his injuries in front of a mirror. Fortunately for him, he’d been smart enough to remember a first aid kit. When he exited the restroom fifteen minutes later, his face was wrapped in bandages. The kid looked like he’d just gotten out of plastic surgery. Jamie couldn’t control her laughter.

Izzy sneered at her. Or, at least, his head tilted at an angle that suggested he sneered. “Remind me again why I kept you alive.”

“‘Cause I’m cute.”

“Whatever you say, Rapunzel.”

It took her a moment to understand the joke, and when she did, she slugged him on the arm. He dropped to the ground, moaning and rubbing where she’d hit him. “Oh shit, sorry,” she said, helping him up. “I forgot about the dinosaur DNA
you injected into me.
”

“Sure,” he said. “That definitely seems like something a rational human being would just casually forget.”

Kenshin leapt between them and clasped his hands over their mouths. Jamie’s first thought was how easy it would be for her to grab his hand and dismember it from his arm. Just twist and snap and pull and tear. It’d be as simple as dividing Play-Doh. But Kenshin wouldn’t touch her like this unless something was wrong. She tensed and remained still, searching the city with only the movement of her pupils and the strength of her nostrils. Once Kenshin confirmed they were both calm, he released his grip from their mouths and redirected their attention to the top of a nearby museum. A pterodactyl was perched on the corner of the roof, its head cocked down at them.

“Do you think it sees us?” Jamie asked.

The pterodactyl responded by screeching and plunging off the roof.

Izzy gulped. “Yes, I’d wager that’s a fair assumption.” Then he screamed and ran toward the museum doors. Kenshin followed. Jamie didn’t budge, just stood on the sidewalk watching the winged beast drop above her. They shared eye contact and both understood neither would be backing down from this inevitable clash. Maybe the pterodactyl sensed that Jamie wasn’t like the other food it’d been eating the past few weeks. Maybe it was too dumb for such complex thoughts. Either way, someone was about to die.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Izzy shouted from the stairs of the museum. “That thing is going to rip you in half.
Come on.
”

Jamie ignored him. She dropped the Russian rifle again. Why did she bring it in the first place? Her bare hands were good enough. Her bare hands could feel flesh and blood.

She waited. One second, two seconds, three—

The pterodactyl opened its long, bird mouth as it neared. In the distance, Izzy continued yelling for her to stop screwing around, but it was all background noise, his voice reduced to TV static.

Jamie sprung up. The pterodactyl screeched louder. Jamie laughed. The laughter boosted her higher. She wrapped her arms around the bird’s neck and threw herself over its body, so she was on its spine. The pterodactyl redirected its flight upward to avoid smashing into concrete. Jamie squeezed her arms around its neck until the bird’s screeches turned to yelps and it twisted, trying to throw Jamie off and failing. Suffocating, the bird headed toward the side of the museum. Two seconds before impact, Jamie leapt backward and down as the sound of the pterodactyl’s neck snapping echoed through the empty streets of downtown Dinosauria.

Jamie landed cleanly on the sidewalk and calmly strode up the steps to the museum. Kenshin and Izzy watched her join them, dazed. Kenshin nodded, approved. Izzy shook his head, jaw dropped, mumbling, “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.”

Jamie nodded at the museum entrance. “So what’s in here?”

“Fossils, bones,” Izzy said.

“And?”

He shrugged. “That’s it.”

Jamie stared. “But why.”

“What do you mean?”

She laughed. “I mean, why do you have a building for people to look at bones on an island full of actual dinosaurs?”

“Hey, a lot of people enjoy looking at fossils.”

Jamie waited for the punchline, but he seemed to be finished talking. “Wait here, I’ll be out in a minute.”

She entered the museum and exited exactly one minute later. She held the long, curved rib of an adult
Velociraptor
. The end of the bone was pointed. Hopefully sharp enough to pierce the flesh of other dinosaurs. At the very least, it’d cut through some of Kresevich’s dumbass soldiers.

Izzy seemed to grow more confused as the day progressed. He eyed the rib with absolute puzzlement. “What the hell are you gonna do with that?”

Jamie winked. “Bend over.”

3

Kenshin moved like a shadow through the city. Doctor Israel maintained a distance of three feet behind him. He’d instructed the doctor not to stray farther. If any of the island’s dragons tried to attack them, Kenshin wanted him close enough to quickly pick up and escort to safety.

“You realize I’m not completely useless, right?” Doctor Israel had asked.

Kenshin did not respond.

“For fuck’s sake, I’m the one who created these things, and you’re acting like I’m some kind of bubble boy.”

“Bubbles pop,” Kenshin said. “That would be a terrible form of protection.”

Above them, Ms. Rock traveled slightly ahead, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. She’d expressed a way to unwind some of her energy that felt ready to burst from her body, so Kenshin suggested she climb a building and be their eyes in the sky. Not only was Ms. Rock an expert climber, but her vision could now be compared to that of a hawk thanks to the medicine Doctor Israel had been pumping into her during her period of unconsciousness.

“Where are we even going?” Doctor Israel asked. He panted and dry-heaved from exhaustion.

“The hotel she was staying at.”

“How is that going to help us?”

“She claims the reason is very important.”

Doctor Israel sneered, then coughed. “But she didn’t tell you the exact reason?”

“She did not.”

“I swear to god, if she’s trying to find her lipstick or tampons or whatever, I’m going to explode.”

Kenshin sighed. “Perhaps there is no mystery involved as to why you fail to impress women.”

“Hey, fuck you, Kenny. I’m tired and ready to get off this goddamn island, which is something I know you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“Then you need her to help you escape, now more than ever. Her new abilities will ensure your survival.”

“So would your katana.”

Kenshin instinctively touched the handle of his weapon, which was sheathed at his hip. “My katana can only take you so far. It is powerful, but not invincible. Besides, this situation will spread beyond the island, and I cannot leave with you.”